Gramophone Editor's Choice - June 2009
• Pieter recorded the Walton in Australia in 2007 in several live concerts with the excellent Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the experienced baton of the British conductor Jeffrey Tate. This recording has been expertly edited from the live concerts (applause omitted). The rest of the recording was made in studio conditions in Holland.
• The works for solo cello are interrelated and comprise the Bloch Suite (written at exactly the same time as the Walton Concerto in 1957), the early Ligeti Sonata (1948-53) and two works written for Rostropovich: Britten’s Ciaconna from the 2nd suite and one of Walton’s own contributions to the ground bass form, the Passacaglia.
• For the concerto Wispelwey plays his normal Guadagnini cello but for the solo cello works he was thrilled to be able to record on the great ‘Magg’ Stradivarius from 1698